Speakers

Jessica Ickes currently serves as the Associate Vice President for Institutional Research and Effectiveness and SACSCOC accreditation liaison at Florida Institute of Technology in Melbourne Florida. She has been privileged to serve for the last twenty years in various leadership roles in institutional research, academic and administrative assessment, and accreditation in public and private higher education emphasizing the use of data for institutional decision-making and improvement. She has recently developed and taught an undergraduate course “The Creation and Manipulation of Information”. Jessica also serves as a research associate for Ruffalo Noel Levitz specializing in the analysis survey data and curriculum and cost analysis. She earned her B.S. in Psychology and French at Juniata College and her M.A. in Higher Education Administration from Andrews University.

Alexandra Hanlon is the Director of the Center for Biostatistics and Health Data Science (CBHDS), and Professor of Practice in the Department of Statistics, at Virginia Tech. She came to Virginia Tech in 2019 to build a collaborative group whose mission is to achieve excellence in the university’s health- and medically-related research portfolio through fostering collaborations across biostatistics, computer science, engineering, bioinformatics, biology, clinical practice, translation, policy, and others. She has served as principal or co-investigator on numerous federally and foundation funded research projects within the areas of mental health, cancer, cardiovascular disease, stress, sleep, communication, violence, gerontology, obesity, biobehavioral studies, and care transitions. She has co-authored over 400 peer-reviewed publications through her collaborations. She serves on various Data Safety Monitoring Boards for drug development clinical trials, and as a scientific reviewer for the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI), the National Science Foundation (NSF), and the National Institutes of Health (NIH). She is a Fellow of the American Statistical Association (ASA) and currently serves on the ASA's Board of Directors.

Dr. Hanlon obtained her doctorate degree in Biostatistics from Temple University, with emphasis on nonlinear mixed-effects modeling for classifying disease trajectories over time. As such, she leads a growing team of biostatisticians to apply contemporary and sophisticated methods to translate research questions within a team science framework.

Dr. Laura Freeman is a Research Associate Professor of Statistics and the Director of the Intelligent Systems Division at the Virginia Tech National Security Institute. Her research leverages experimental methods for conducting research that brings together cyber-physical systems, data science, artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning to address critical challenges in national security. She is also a hub faculty member in the Commonwealth Cyber Initiative and leads research in AI Assurance. She develops new methods for test and evaluation focusing on emerging system technology. She is also the Assistant Dean for Research for the College of Science, in that capacity she works to shape research directions and collaborations in across the College of Science.

Previously, Dr. Freeman was the Assistant Director of the Operational Evaluation Division at the Institute for Defense Analyses. In that position, she established and developed an interdisciplinary analytical team of statisticians, psychologists, and engineers to advance scientific approaches to DoD test and evaluation. During 2018, Dr. Freeman served as that acting Senior Technical Advisor for Director Operational Test and Evaluation (DOT&E). As the Senior Technical Advisor, Dr. Freeman provided leadership, advice, and counsel to all personnel on technical aspects of testing military systems. She reviewed test strategies, plans, and reports from all systems on DOT&E oversight.

Dr. Freeman has a B.S. in Aerospace Engineering, a M.S. in Statistics and a Ph.D. in Statistics, all from Virginia Tech. Her Ph.D. research was on design and analysis of experiments for reliability data.

Dr. Faltin earned her Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Rochester after completing her undergraduate work at the University of Oklahoma.

Today Donna serves as the Director of VT's Online Master of Ag and Applied Economics program and is a professor of practice in the Department of Agriculture and Applied Economics. She leads the initiative to expand the reach of the M.S. program through the development and deployment of online offerings. Donna also serves as Director of the collaborative Virginia Tech AAEC – Farm Credit Administration professional development program.

Before joining Virginia Tech, Dr. Faltin co-founded and led The Faltin Group, providing research, training, and consulting services in finance, marketing, econometrics, risk management, and Six Sigma for Marketing & Innovation. Dr. Faltin has worked extensively with business leaders to initiate and lead strategic econometrics and data analytics applications across a broad spectrum of domestic and international financial, service, and manufacturing businesses.

Previously, she served for 7 years as General Electric's Senior Economist. She worked closely with and advised senior GE leadership across a wide range of business units designing innovative applications to finance, marketing, risk management, and financial performance monitoring. Before GE, she taught and conducted research as a professor of economics in the business school at the University of Florida.

D. Sarah Stamps is an associate professor of geophysics in the Virginia Tech Department of Geosciences specializing in geodesy and tectonophysics. She and her research group members produce and use GNSS positioning data to observe how the Earth’s surface moves. They also use computational modeling to elucidate the physical processes driving the Earth’s surface motions. The data analysis and computational modeling aspects of her research program have applications in volcanic, seismic, and coastal hazards, as well as the plate tectonic theory. Her study areas include Tanzania, Uganda, Madagascar, Malawi, China, the East African Rift System, and the Chesapeake Bay, USA. She graduated from Purdue University with her PhD in 2013 and did her postdoctoral studies at MIT and the University of California Los Angeles. She has been awarded numerous awards from the US government, including the NSF CAREER award and the NSF EarthCube award for Outstanding Service and Leadership.

Anne M. Brown, PhD, is an Assistant Professor at Virginia Tech, in Data Services, and is also affiliated with the Academy of Integrated Science and Department of Biochemistry. She holds a Ph.D. in Biochemistry from Virginia Tech. She has expertise in bioinformatics and computational biology, as well as applied data science. Her research focuses on data-driven methods for understanding protein structure-function relationships and drug discovery. She trains and mentors undergraduates in these areas, in addition to creating communities of practice that have students training, applying, and solving data challenges. She pursues pedagogical research investigating the best routes and frameworks for experiential learning and workforce development. She recently received the Virginia Tech Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Award and was named the Council of Undergraduate Research (CUR) Outstanding Biology Research Faculty Mentor.

Dr. Milbury is Assistant Vice President and Manager of the Data & Analytics Department at First Hawaiian Bank. She started in 2017 as a Quantitative Analyst, then was promoted and started building her team after a year or so.

In her prior academic career, she earned a BS in Astro/Physics from UC Santa Cruz and PhD in Planetary Physics from UCLA. She has a fellowship through NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and her dissertation was researching Mars’ paleomagnetic fields. Subsequently, she did a postdoc in France at Université de Nantes in the Laboratoire de Planétologie et Géodynamique furthering her graduate studies. Her next postdoc was at Purdue University on the science team of NASA’s Gravity Recovery And Internal Laboratory (GRAIL) mission using a shock physics hydrocode to model hypervelocity impact cratering on the Moon, as well as lunar lava tubes and buried impact craters. She was an Assistant Professor in the Physics and Engineering Department at West Virginia Wesleyan College for a year before joining FHB.

She has been interviewed by Sky and Telescope Magazine, Hawaii Technology Development Corporation as part of their Women in Tech Series, and served on a local panel for the global Women in Data Science conference organized by Stanford University. Her research projects have been reported on by National Geographic, BBC, AP, Space.com, and other international news organizations.

Dr. Leanna House is an Associate Professor of Statistics at Virginia Tech (VT), Blacksburg, Virginia. Prior to her appointment at VT, she earned her M.A.T. in Curriculum Development from Cornell University, Ithaca, New York; earned her Ph.D. and M.S. in Statistics from Duke University, Durham, North Carolina; and completed a postdoc at The University of Durham, U.K. In addition to serving as a professor at Virginia Tech, Dr. House is one Deputy Division Leader for Computational Methods and Data Analytics (CMDA) and Director of Education and Community for the recently funded Imageomics Institute (imageomics.org). Dr. House’s research interests include Bayesian statistical modeling with an emphasis in visualization and uncertainty quantification, as well as, analytic methods that foster human-computer interaction and education.

Jennifer H. Van Mullekom joined Virginia Tech in Fall 2016 as the Director of the Statistical Applications and Innovations Group (SAIG) and an Associate Professor of Statistical Practice. SAIG provides collaborative statistical support to researchers within Virginia Tech and to outside clients as well. She teaches a collaboration skills course to graduate students and mentors them as they practice statistics as SAIG collaborators. Jen also teaches design of experiments for transactional environments and is designing a master’s degree program in data science for Virginia Tech in conjunction with colleagues from math and computer science.

Formerly, she was a Senior Consulting Statistician and Certified Six Sigma Master Black Belt in DuPont's Applied Statistics Group. She earned a DuPont Engineering Excellence Award in 2014, one of the company’s highest honors.

Jen is active in professional societies, having held leadership positions in both ASA and ASQ. She co-developed ASA's course on "Effective Presentations for Statisticians" as a member of past ASA President Bob Rodriguez's Career Success Factors Task Group. She has also served on ASA President Karen Kafadar’s “Impact All!” Workgroup.

Jennifer received her PhD and MS from Virginia Tech. She holds undergraduate degrees from Concord University in Mathematics and Mathematics Education.